[OhJstFkOffAlrdy]

Was I drunk enough to just imagine things last night, or have two posts from Zambini and myself been deleted from this thread?

[OhJstFkOffAlrdy]

Originally Posted by Oswald2001 ↗

#hitchhikingrobotslivesmatter

Clearly, this robot was the victim of some truly *******'d individuals.

[Clubhouse]

Originally Posted by Metal Mike ↗

On the one hand, I thought the hitchBOT idea was adorable.

On the other hand, kicking its ass is a pretty stupid-funny troll.

If you're a group of drunk teenagers I guess it would.

[OhJstFkOffAlrdy]

Originally Posted by Clubhouse ↗

If you're a group of drunk teenagers I guess it would.

I retain much of my drunk inner teenager.

I dunno. I tend to anthropomorphize inanimate objects that have friendly faces and can talk. Makes me think of a retard or a stupid innocent animal.

[sherrimccharles]

it just makes me upset every time I read about this.

[rob666]

Originally Posted by Vedderman ↗

Probably the fairest assessment of the situation that I have encountered:

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/hit...-de-1721850503


First things first. “HitchBOT,” for all practical purposes, was a garbage can with an iPhone in it. It could not walk or stand or fire lasers or open a can of beans. By what standard was this piece of useless shit a “robot” in the first place? The answer: a shabby standard. A Canadian one.

My children have a box full of toys. It cannot stand or walk or fire lasers or open a can of beans. Inside this box of toys, there is a battery-powered Iron Man mask that, on occasion, will activate in the middle of the night and make weird noises; I can hear it from my bedroom. This box is not a robot. If I left it on the curb, it would not be a hitchhiking robot; it would be litter. If beating the shit out of it would be a weird thing to do, fine; so would taking it to a baseball game. So would mourning for it when some of its contents were separated from each other.

Canadians made hitchBOT, which is to say that they crudely assembled a broadly anthropomorphic heap of refuse and left it someplace for strangers to take care of for them. It traveled across Canada and Europe for some reason, experiencing nothing, doing nothing, being all the while nothing more than a loudmouthed freeloading bucket. Then it came to the United States, where it caught a richly deserved beating, just like Canada’s hockey teams do when they come here. I do not know what motivated this beating; if it was revulsion at the very notion of a smarmy Canuck trash can with the temerity to expect favors, that’s reason aplenty.


The impulse, here, is to say that hitchBOT was “destroyed,” but that is nonsense; what is the actual consequence to hitchBOT of detaching its parts? A loss of function? What function? It had no function. It was a pile of trash. Providing a cathartic release for some pissed-off Eagles fan is the closest it has ever come to usefulness. In its violent disassembling, it found, briefly and for the first time, an actual purpose.

If our guileless, simpleton neighbors to the north wish to draw faces on their buckets and treat them like friends, the sparse population density of their pine-fresh taiga wilderness makes this a sad but understandable choice, but the United States is not a receptacle for twee Canadian garbage. It is a grownup land where the humans know each other and do not ameliorate the loneliness of car trips by picking up roadside litter and befriending it.

The United States has many actual robots; they assemble Chevrolets, and throw pitches, and do battle on TV, and fall down, and probably other things too. The day the United States has need for a malingering robo-hobo with no skills that sits next to the road like a bag of shit and asks people to do things for it, we will build one for ourselves, and have the good sense to give it

Every negative American stereotype neatly condensed in paragraph form.

[rob666]

Those damn socialist, freeloading robots...... Probably a fucking Muslim robot too........ I guess the American version would have been concealed carrying

[sherrimccharles]

Originally Posted by rob666 ↗

Every negative American stereotype neatly condensed in paragraph form.

I was going to say the same in a not so nice way as you put that there.

[Vedderman]

Geez. Where the hell is that famous, easygoing Canadian sense of self-deprecating humor? Is every Canuck in this forum that cranky and irritable? 'Boo-hoo, your tongue-in-cheek article made fun of our fake robot and population density, you brute.' Really?

My wife (who was born in Sudbury, raised in Ottawa, and got her degree in Guelph) thought the article I linked was hilarious. I included it here for some levity under the assumption that most people here would find it equally amusing, especially the Canadians.

And people say I take myself too seriously...

[Morbid75]

Originally Posted by Metal Mike ↗

They should have designed it to respond to sudden impacts with some sort of plea, like "Help, that hurts" or "Please stop that" or "What did I ever do to you?"

Even in my angriest and most destructive moods, that would be enough to make me feel bad.

No you would have laughed and kept on beating